Andy Miller

The lives of the artists — and other mysteries

Benjamin Wood’s The Ecliptic — both mystery story and thoughtful enquiry into the nature of artistic inspiration — will delight fans of Donna Tartt, John Fowles and The Prisoner

issue 15 August 2015

Benjamin Wood’s first novel, The Bellwether Revivals, was published in 2012, picked up good reviews, was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and the Commonwealth Book Prize and has become a bestseller in France — a promising start to a literary career, in other words. Wood’s new novel The Ecliptic is both an attempt to consolidate the success of his debut and also a meditation, among other things, on how to sustain such a career over decades while producing original and important art.

On an island off the coast of Istanbul lies Portmantle, a remote community for painters, writers and musicians. The settlement provides a respite from the burden of creativity and the expectations of the world; it also strips the identities of its residents, assigning them new names and putting them under the control of a provost (shades of the Village in the 1960s television series The Prisoner, filmed in Portmeirion).

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